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Tag: COVID

  • AIOps 2020: IT Talent Is the Game-Changer

    AIOps 2020: IT Talent Is the Game-Changer

    Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) is a fairly new catch-all term for any multi-layered development initiative involving big data analytics, machine learning and/or AI to automate and solve business and IT problems. Definitions vary, but most support the notion that AIOps improve IT performance, infrastructure, cloud and operations.

    This is a dramatic shift in how IT operations have been traditionally managed, requiring a digital transformation commitment from the organization and teams involved. Any enterprise, in any industry, with a complex systems infrastructure can benefit from AIOps. However, differences in AIOps strategies can result in benefits realized in unique ways.

    Whether AIOps solutions are homegrown or commercial, they typically fall into two categories: domain centric and domain agnostic. Domain-centric AIOps focus on specific data types and sources, while domain-agnostic AIOps are more open and ingest a variety of data points.

    Kentik is a domain-centric AIOps solution focusing its platform on large volumes of network data, such as NetFlow, SNMP, streaming telemetry and BGP routing data. It can provide companies with AI capabilities to automatically recognize traffic anomalies, predict cost overages, alert on traffic spikes and more.

    Moogsoft, a domain-agnostic example, provides AI for detecting anomalies and alerting ops teams to potential issues, as well as reducing mean time to discovery (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR). It can monitor system events and is a good illustration for how AIOps not only frees IT resources for other important tasks, but does so effectively.

    No matter which option is right for your organization, it is important to start small when testing the AIOps waters. Pick a specific use case, implement it and then expand out as the use case proves itself.

    Any Software or Web Property Can Benefit from AIOps

    AIOps benefits run deep within an IT infrastructure. With the COVID-19 outbreak, the internet and systems running businesses globally are more strained than ever, given work from home mandates, increased traffic and higher digital asset volume.

    This bandwidth stretch hits people personally, too (e.g. Comcast, Netflix, YouTube, etc.). Greater usage results in an expanded attack surface for cyber criminals to target. AIOps consistency, reliability, security and self-sufficiency directly affect a company’s viability and the amount of time required of support teams to address issues that arise.

    Certainly, an organization is in an optimal position when IT teams can use AIOps to proactively address issues before a red flag needs attention. However, when the fires on systems around the world start, AIOps is there to put them out with its ability to quickly inspect and act.

    For example, in mid-March when the COVID-19 outbreak resulted in widespread school/work from home mandates, online services from ABCMouse to InstaCart to Microsoft Teams saw site complication and outages. Any CTO knows that IT operations and AIOps teams surely answered the call to quickly detect and resolve root causes.

    However, tools or knowledge only provide half of the equation necessary to be successful. Many organizations either don’t have access to the right resources to quickly remediate issues, or don’t have the technology necessary to get the job done. For instance, the State of N.J. has an urgent need for COBOL programmers to support IT efforts. Even if N.J. knows the way to solve its problem, valuable time is being wasted trying to find the means for it to be accomplished.

    Top Tech Talent Is AIOps’ Secret Weapon

    Automation is the backbone of technology, but true AIOps panacea is found when the right technologists know how to use the information AIOps provides.

    Think of a medical MRI: Once the technology identifies issues, human intervention steps in to determine how and when to improve and fix things. The same is true with AIOps. It frees an IT team to prioritize the most important items and who should tackle them, instead of combing through endless logs and wasting every developer’s time on break fixes.

    How a highly qualified, on-demand workforce makes a tangible, measurable difference here is a factor not to be underestimated. Talented technologists who can immediately ramp up on teams and systems—because it’s what they do day in and day out—seamlessly augment internal development staff and can address/remediate issues.

    The future of AIOps goes beyond the technology itself and rests in the hands of dynamically built, virtual teams that can address issues just as quickly as the AIOps platforms identify them.

  • How 200 CIOs Responded to a Fully Remote Economy

    How 200 CIOs Responded to a Fully Remote Economy

    The COVID-19 global pandemic has ushered a significant priority shift for the digital workplace. As development teams become completely remote, executive priorities are rapidly adapting to meet the gravity of these unanticipated times.

    But, were IT leaders prepared for such a dramatic shift? What are they doing to evolve? To answer these tough questions, let’s turn to the data. A March 2020 study, conducted by Adobe and Fortune, surveyed 200 chief information officers (CIOs) on how their priorities are changing to meet the needs of a global crisis. Here’s what they found.

    Remote Work

    As it turns out, the majority of enterprises (84%) report they were prepared for remote work, with a slight increase for SMBs, at 94%.

    “Like most business leaders, CIOs now have to rethink priorities, or at least reorder them, and we must reinvent ourselves now as virtual leaders,” said Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard.

    We are living in a golden age of virtual collaboration tools—teams have Slack, GitHub, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and many other options. Yet, 53% of CIOs still cite communication as the biggest hurdle to remote work. Nevertheless, half of the CIOs surveyed reported their organizations are still actively hiring, indicating steady growth for IT.

    New Technologies

    Regarding technological adoption, some organizations are struggling to keep pace. Twenty percent of CIOs report serious shortfalls in technology tools. Interestingly, less than 25% of CIOs estimated increased financial spending for areas such as public cloud, infrastructure and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).

    “Indeed, nearly all CIOs (90%) surveyed said they use a public cloud service for at least some of their data, but most is housed on-premises,” said Giselle Abramovich. “Only one in three organizations store half or more of their data in a public cloud.”

    One thing most enterprises agree on is the need for better security—seven in 10 anticipated increased financial investments into cybersecurity.

    Artificial Intelligence

    Only 50% of enterprise CIOs said they use AI in one or more projects (25% for SMB CIOs). However, it seems to be a growing discipline, as 90% of the organizations that have implemented AI have done so in the past year.

    Though AI has garnered significant interest, there are hurdles to actual implementation. According to the report, “the biggest issues related to AI include getting data in order, funding and finding the right talent.” With more people online and the importance of distanced communication, it is likely that investments into AI will increase, especially for use in IT support and customer interactions.

    “We’re making AI a strategic priority at Adobe. AI implementation is difficult for many organizations because it’s still new to most businesses, and there is a shortage in talent that has a deep understanding of it,” said Stoddard.

    Analysis: Impact on DevOps

    CIOs are in a unique position. Leaders are reevaluating business practices and also reassessing their technological investments. As the Adobe/Fortune study shows, many companies were prepared for 100% remote work, albeit some more than others.

    To endure a COVID-19 economical drought, CIOs are taking action. The report indicates increased investment into remote tools, AI and cybersecurity, while aligning hiring and new infrastructure to reach these goals.

    Institutions with a previous investment into cloud infrastructure as well as scalability practices, such as serverless, are likely well-equipped for increased online interaction and unanticipated usages. In this virtual realm, automation is also key to streamline deployments and monitor applications in remote fashions.

    Though the report doesn’t differentiate between company types, it’s likely that digitally native enterprises are well-equipped as well. In addition, the trend from physical storefront to “brick and click,” has only been magnified by the current climate, forcing retail and banks to invest heavily in digital technologies and DevOps.

    From a DevSecOps standpoint, increased end-user online action means an increased number of threats. Thus, security strategies for containers and service meshes should be reevaluated.

    By repositioning priorities, IT can adapt to the new state of interaction. With deliberate execution, CIOs and all executives alike could find themselves on the right side of the river once the economy resumes.

  • Tips For Managing Development Teams Remotely During Coronavirus

    Tips For Managing Development Teams Remotely During Coronavirus

    Thanks to the global coronavirus pandemic, around a third of the world’s population is on lockdown in their homes, which means a huge number of businesses are currently trying to navigate remote working solutions. Trying to collaborate on software development is difficult at the best of times when your team is all in the same office, but with your team split across various home offices communication and collaboration is made all the more difficult.

    Remote development work is an altogether different challenge, one that needs careful thought and new solutions. Luckily, there are ways to get around it, and they don’t all require huge investment or innovation. Just tweaking the way you think and work will help you continue to deliver on your development goals.

    Spread Knowledge

    Many teams run into problems with their remote workforce when they realize knowledge is not equally distributed amongst team members. I don’t mean the company log-in details (though you might have that problem too), but that the company’s vision and culture have not been effectively communicated. In an office setting this isn’t too much of a problem, as developers can be sent off on projects and the team can come together to implement them with one voice at the end, but when the whole team is divided it’s a lot harder to achieve this final cohesion.

    To avoid having to piece your projects together like a jigsaw puzzle, make sure all of your developers are clear on what goals the company wants to achieve as a whole, and what culture and tone the company is wishing to promote. That way any development decisions made in private working sessions are still geared toward the overall company aim, and individual projects will slot in well together.

    Communicate

    To spread knowledge effectively, you also need a major focus on communication. You won’t realize how much the office dynamic contributes to communication until it’s gone. Working from home eliminates many of the little interactive scenarios in which team members can discuss ideas and clarify details. 

    To counteract this, you need to communicate far more than you previously did. Send more emails for clarification and have more regular meetings (over video chat) than you otherwise would. This might seem annoying or even counterproductive at first, but having a clear flow of information across the whole team is important for accountability. 

    Take Note

    Related to communication, you may find it really helps to note more things down. You’d be surprised how much information is transmitted from being physically in the same space as someone, so a lot of workers find it a lot harder to pay attention to video of audio meetings and can easily forget details. Whether it’s minutes of a Zoom meeting or a brief one-on-one phone conversation, jot down a note of important tasks or details to remember, and circulate them throughout your team.

    Be Humble And Accept Feedback

    If you’re managing a development team that’s just gone full remote, accept the fact that you might not have all the answers. This might be as new to you as everyone else, and even if you have experience of remote working before it probably wasn’t during a global pandemic. By all means, show a strong sense of leadership and implement a solid plan of action, but be humble enough to accept that it might not be a perfect plan.

    Show your humility by being open to feedback from your team members. They are having to adjust to a new lifestyle that may require new strategies to deal with. You might consider flexible working hours, or reassessing your tools or communications strategy. Figure this out as a team and you’re much more likely to keep morale up and not sacrifice any productivity.

    Embrace The New Normal

    Most importantly, don’t spend your time waiting for things to go back to normal. Treating this period as a brief interruption to your normal working schedule will stop you from fully committing to new strategies and tools to help you produce good work right now. It will show in your products, and if your remote working period lasts longer than you’d expected it will mess up your production schedule. For now, this is the new normal: embrace that and start with your best foot forward.

  • Business Conferences Amid the COVID Crisis

    Business Conferences Amid the COVID Crisis

    We’re all hunkered down in quarantine, so major trade shows have been cancelled. Virtual events will get us through this patch–but what comes next?

    It is said that in times of crisis, we adapt. We modify our behavior and we persevere. And when the immediate crisis has subsided, we look at what worked, and often adapt much of it into our lives as we move forward.

    We’re obviously in a crisis now, and among the many changes we have had to make is one that impacts our professional lives. For years, we’ve regarded major conferences and trade shows as an integral part of our technical learning curve–and yes, as a major part of our social interaction with our industry peers.

    That’s all changing before our very eyes, and the COVID crisis is only one element. To be sure, the restrictions placed on our travel and ability to assemble have directly impacted the conference industry. A recent article places the loss at more than a billion dollars, and that number has only increased since then.

    O’Reilly’s decision to shutter its physical conference business also hit the industry like a bombshell. But our ability to adapt and change presents us with other opportunities. O’Reilly’s CEO acknowledged as much, saying, “With large technology vendors moving their events completely online, we believe the stage is set for a new normal moving forward when it comes to in-person events.”

    The past few years have seen accelerated growth in smaller regional conferences, along with a greater emphasis on virtual conferences.  The shift has already begun, and we believe it will continue long after we are back to business as usual, which we believe will not be “business as usual.”

    For openers, CFOs and others responsible for the bottom line will be more active in questioning the value of spending significant sums of money on a conference in Las Vegas or elsewhere, especially in lieu of the cancellation of conferences this spring. They will ask: What is the ROI for going to these large get-togethers? Can the money be more efficiently and effectively spent to attract and retain prospects and customers? Are there smaller, regional alternatives that cost less and pose fewer risks?

    Conference attendees ask the same: Can I spend less money and achieve similar results closer to home? Would I prefer to be among a smaller public gathering? Can I simply attend an online forum of some sort?

    Regional and virtual summits will meet those needs on both counts; in fact, they have already begun doing so. A recent Los Angeles-based physical conference that had signed up 300 participants quickly pivoted to an online virtual summit when the “stay at home” order was issued. In the process, the event more than doubled its registrations. Even when things get back to normal, companies may well see regional conferences as delivering the same educational and business benefits as the large mega-conventions. They will be treading lightly, with even less inclination than before to attend and spend at the bigger shows.

    I’m not suggesting that all of the big conferences will shrivel up and fade away. Those sponsored by major vendors, such as RSA, Microsoft, Tableau and Gartner, will still be held and will still be successful. But the COVID crisis has forced companies, big and small, to take a more focused look at the conventions they may have previously taken for granted. And it’s not only in the tech sector, of course; events such as hardware shows, auto shows, even PizzaExpo, have been delayed or cancelled.

    Our current crisis has forced us to adapt and to alter our thinking in any number of areas. The purpose of the conferences we attend to learn and interact with our peers are, and will be, no different than in the past. However, their physical nature (where and how they are held) will. The change has already begun.

    — Michael Hiskey